Cloud cover is a major forcing, and uncertain, say researchers from the Hebrew University, US and Australia
Jerusalem, Jan. 26, 2014 – The warming effect of human-induced greenhouse gases is a given, but to what extent can we predict its future influence? That is an issue on which science is making progress, but the answers are still far from exact, say researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the US and Australia who have studied the issue and whose work which has just appeared in the journal Science.
Indeed, one could say that the picture is a “cloudy” one, since the determination of the greenhouse gas effect involves multifaceted interactions with cloud cover.
To some extent, aerosols –- particles that float in the air caused by dust or pollution, including greenhouse gases – counteract part of the harming effects of climate warming by increasing the amount of sunlight reflected from clouds back into space. However, the ways in which these aerosols affect climate through their interaction with clouds are complex and incompletely captured by climate models, say the researchers. As a result, the radiative forcing (that is, the disturbance to the earth’s “energy budget” from the sun) caused by human activities is highly uncertain, making it difficult to predict the extent of global warming.
And while advances have led to a more detailed understanding of aerosol-cloud interactions and their effects on climate, further progress is hampered by limited observational capabilities and coarse climate models, says Prof. Daniel Rosenfeld of the Fredy and Nadine Herrmann Institute of Earth Sciences at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, author of the article in Science. Rosenfeld wrote this article in cooperation with Dr. Steven Sherwood of the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Dr. Robert Wood of the University of Washington, Seattle, and Dr. Leo Donner of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. .
Their recent studies have revealed a much more complicated picture of aerosol-cloud interactions than considered previously. Depending on the meteorological circumstances, aerosols can have dramatic effects of either increasing or decreasing the cloud sun-deflecting effect, the researchers say. Furthermore, little is known about the unperturbed aerosol level that existed in the preindustrial era. This reference level is very important for estimating the radiative forcing from aerosols.
Also needing further clarification is the response of the cloud cover and organization to the loss of water by rainfall. Understanding of the formation of ice and its interactions with liquid droplets is even more limited, mainly due to poor ability to measure the ice-nucleating activity of aerosols and the subsequent ice-forming processes in clouds.
Explicit computer simulations of these processes even at the scale of a whole cloud or multi-cloud system, let alone that of the planet, require hundreds of hours on the most powerful computers available. Therefore, a sufficiently accurate simulation of these processes at a global scale is still impractical.
Recently, however, researchers have been able to create groundbreaking simulations in which models were formulated presenting simplified schemes of cloud-aerosol interactions, This approach offers the potential for model runs that resolve clouds on a global scale for time scales up to several years, but climate simulations on a scale of a century are still not feasible. The model is also too coarse to resolve many of the fundamental aerosol-cloud processes at the scales on which they actually occur. Improved observational tests are essential for validating the results of simulations and ensuring that modeling developments are on the right track, say the researchers.
While it is unfortunate that further progress on understanding aerosol-cloud interactions and their effects on climate is limited by inadequate observational tools and models, achieving the required improvement in observations and simulations is within technological reach, the researchers emphasize, provided that the financial resources are invested. The level of effort, they say, should match the socioeconomic importance of what the results could provide: lower uncertainty in measuring man-made climate forcing and better understanding and predictions of future impacts of aerosols on our weather and climate.
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***this line really is the sub-heading, i kid u not:
27 Jan: UK Independent: What the Pope’s green manifesto should say…
***1. Introduce an international carbon tax
by Memphis Barker
To stop the planet overheating will require all kinds of power, so it is a boon that ‘higher’ is joining the fray. Pope Francis is drafting an encyclical – the Vatican’s version of an open letter – on the environment. In person soft-spoken and stirringly humane, in this case The Voice of God will hit a thunderous note. Two weeks ago, Francis gave warning: “God always forgives, we sometimes forgive, but when nature – creation – is mistreated, she never forgives.”…
Here is one suggestion, both practical and presumptuous. Call for an international carbon tax…
Right now, twenty per cent of global emissions are subject to some form of carbon tax (though in Europe the price is too low to make much difference). If the encyclical is still in draft, Francis should call for the other eighty per cent to join in, and a higher price per tonne. Climate change is one problem – as the Pope no doubt recognises – that prayer alone will not solve.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/what-the-popes-green-manifesto-should-say-1-introduce-an-international-carbon-tax-9088975.html
@William Howard McClenney
I am living here at 60 deg north in the oslofjort trying to be a washproof and properly enlighted viking all the time, think globally, and buy it and act locally. Thus I also build up my chosmology in a very local and personal way.
Fred Hoyle has been presented and studied at the university. SIR! Fred stands with only one foot on the Pedestal…. and so does also SIR! Arthur Eddington.
What stands better is the younger dryas cathastrophy. But what caused it? There are many theories and suggestion , but my very hot suggestion is the quite sudden outbreak of the quite enormeous Eiffel vulcanism at exactly the same time and dated. I think that will ruin any other theory. Katla shall also have had a large outbreak shortly after, making things even worse. But I am not sure of all theese things; it must be checked up very carefully. I have mentioned it to Ole Humlum, who is interesteed. The Danes found and invented younger dryas.
I have also looked at Dansgaard Oechsler- oscillations and that seems rather not to be what we have to conscider in our days.They are explained by hydrological and glaciological premises that are not real or present on earth today.
Looking at it in my own way and having not submitted to the obviously arrogant and ignorant fanatic and militant groups of global religious war against science,……..
and against a hockeystick…..
I rather try and see the aspects that will be relevant for my grandchildren to be aware of, so that my grandchildren will remember me with thanks.
And I think CO2 AGW is a reality at climate response 3 deg / doubbling of CO2. But what will be the consequenses?
During last glaciation, the sub- glacial land areas both in america and in eurasia were extreemly dry, characterized by “Dust bowls…” and enormeous løss- powder sediments.
The whole prarie is Løss- sediments. The Kentucky Bread Basket is such settled Dust bowls from that extreemly period. and so is the very fameous Cerno- sol black soil and bread basket of Ukraina. And the further enormeous Løss sediments, the yellow river of northern China.
This is simply conscistent also with the wapour pressure curve of water. What goes up must come down, and so it is according to Aristoteles, who did not know about space rockets.
Giving a more cloudy and rainy and warmer world especially in the northern hemispere and not so much in the tropical area, because water stabilizes. It starts to rather cool when water wapour gas has warmed enough. Cooling rains from above in the tropes, you see. On top of a tropical hurricane there is tropical snow- hurricane with the sun right in Zenith.
What cools us is not the poles They would have melted long ago if they did.
What cools us is simply Big Bang, a relativistic phaenomena, that measures 2pi minus 30 seconds of arch and keeps 3K.
The Tropopause, not the poles is the cool and cooling side of the globe.
Then what warms us does measure 30 minutes of arch as seen fom here, another relativistic phaenomena, and keeps 5750K.
That is our conditions here and what we can rely on.
A warmer world also seems to become greener, plus that there will be more CO2 for photosyntesis. Bur there may be dramatic extreemes that we call “weather” Ask Anthony Watts on that.,
The extreeemly fameous brown coal sediments worldwide from 50-5 million years ago are from a warm period of very high CO2, quite obviously with a quite enormeous plant growth that ate down the volcanic CO2 from the atmosphere again after the very atlantic ocean opened….. and,…… megafauna to eat that enormeous weed under the mild pissing rains worldwide!
Kaolin- and Bauxit- sediments from that period also tell of very steady rains in a rather warm climate due to high CO2.
Milancovic- cycling- Ice ages came back after green weed had eaten down again all that volcanic CO2 from the opening of the atlantic ocean.
And as it became cooler after maximum holocene due to the falling milancovic trancient, central Asia dried up. And mankind there entered the horseback they left home, ran over and invaded the wetter and greener Europe in masses. And in the east they invaded the greener and wetter and milder northern China so that large walls had to be built against them.
This all entails that we can look forward to a qite much greener and wetter world, allthough not everywhere.
Northern eurasian and american areas are expected to have milder weather hand higher forest and crop growth.
And don`t forget Sahara dried up as it got cooler. Central congo seems to have been more open under max holocene. Culture, stonehenges and pottery is found where there is tight jungle today.
So I am not without hope for my grandchildren, one only has to know it right and to tell them right.
Also very important is that we must stop fighting “the weed”, all that we do not understand. We must go for diversity and rather learn to use and to live with the flora, The green values,….that is our only reliable and serious carbon sink. Future will demand more work from us. Avoid sports and rather go to work. Sports is work astray and perverted work. Rather sing a song and learn to play an instrument, at work.
But if you join the climate deniers and the quite fameous warriors against science and the cheaters and tellers of falseness, you will not be able to teach and to tell your grandchildren right, and then they will blame you and hate you.
http://www.billzilla.org/pearce.htm
What we know is so small compared to what we don’t know!
@Andres Valencia.
YES!
But also think in terms of quality and not just in terms of size and quantity. Then it may look quite different, about essencial knowledge different from a lot of worthless and irrelevant knowledge.
and about “grasping the grain” or the essence of it.
And even Who is entitled to decide and to judge on that?
That is another discussion and maybe quite more important discussion.
Meanwhile…..
back at the late Holocene/mid North American “ranch”, Tonto, cleverly disguised as an already half-precession cycle plus old extreme interglacial, is getting his/her mid North American climate waxed………..
Termination and glacial inception thresholds can occur in 1-3 years. The rest of the climate state reversals can take from decades to a few centuries. And they are not necessarily particularly stable. We have had, in fact, Younger Dryas climate reversals during the last stages of the most recent deglaciations. We have also had from 1 to 3 rather rapid, and reportedly quite unprecedented warmings, just before decaying into yet the next glacial.
Famous astronomer Fred Hoyle (originator of the now disfavored Steady State Theory) stated on the Cambridge Conference Network in 1999:
“This is why the past million years has been essentially a continuing ice-age, broken occasionally by short-lived interglacials. It is also why those who have engaged in lurid talk over an enhanced greenhouse effect raising the Earth’s temperature by a degree or two should be seen as both demented and dangerous. The problem for the present swollen human species is of a drift back into an ice-age, not away from an ice-age.”
The ranch slider is open amid a months long balmy left coast (US) “heat wave”. It’s a hundred degrees F colder (+60 to -40F) in upper midwest North America. I’m pecking this out wearing a T-shirt and gym-shorts. Dansgaard-Oeschger oscillation #19 scored a 16C rise during the early last glacial. The average glacial maximum/peak interglacial difference often reported as ~20C, or ~66F since at least the mid-Brunhes.
So figure whatever should be your late January temperature average, subtract 66F/20C from it for what a reasonable approximation might be for perhaps the next glacial maximum, assuming CO2 is not actually the climate security blanket it is proclaimed from on high to be. If it makes you feel better, use July averages instead.
Then contemplate removing it…….just for grins and giggles.
Say we had gotten right with the AGW program, 17, 15, 10 or even 5 years ago, squelching its concentration to 350.org or less. Would it, could it, be so cold over so much of the northern hemisphere, year on year, northern hemisphere continent by continent? If so, then why do it?
Keeping in mind that your answer must address not just now, not just the next few years, not even the next few decades or centuries, but perhaps the next ~900 centuries. All the way to the next regularly-scheduled interglacial……however “cloudy” or dusty that might be.
“Stay thirsty, my friends.” – Sayeth the most interesting man (woman etc.) in the not necessarily still obvious pre-glacial world……
Grant says:
January 27, 2014 at 3:06 pm
Steven Mosher says;
————————————-
Nice analogy!
I would add that clouds would be of much greater significance to weather and climate, than the air pressure in a vehicles tires.
Well Michael, you just showed everyone, that you don’t know diddly about semiconductor technology, or solid state Physics.
I don’t have the time or patience to explain either how boron and phosphorous at one part in 100,000 radically alter the behavior of electricity and or photons from the pure silicon; nor how CO2 at one part in 2500 radically alters the LWIR optical absorption of air.
But you are welcome to believe whatever you like. The phase that the material is in matters not a jot. Even liquids exhibit the same extreme change in behavior with miniscule impurity content.
The highest purity de-ionized water exhibits an electrical resistivity around 18 megOhm cm. Dip ordinary window glass (soda-lime (green) glass) into such water, and it will immediately dissolve enough glass to become quite electrically conductive. The glass looks untouched, but the small amount in solution destroys the high resistivity of the pure water.
I make it a habit to never stand between somebody, and a cliff they decide to jump off.
“Furthermore, little is known about the unperturbed aerosol level that existed in the preindustrial era. This reference level is very important for estimating the radiative forcing from aerosols.”
Ain’t no such thing as an “unperturbed preidustrial aerosol level”. Check the amount of dust in Greenland and Antarctic “preidustrial” ice-cores, the “pristinest” places on Earth. Dust levels have varied by a factor of approximately 1000 over time (ice ages are dustier).
I have a far superior way to show people how sparse CO2 is.
a. First inform CO2 is under 0.04% of the atmosphere.
b. Hold one arm out full stretch and the other hand out as far as the elbow (1.5m). “This represents 100% of the atmosphere, ok?”
c. Then show them the thickness of your finger nail. “That is about 0.6mm, the same as 0.04% CO2”.
d. Then say if this nail was only one third as thick, all plant life dies.
Plants breathe in CO2 to live. All animal life lives because plants are eaten for their carbon bearing sugars, especially you. Not enough CO2 means death to all life.
“I’ve looked a clouds from both sides now
I really don’t know life at all”
Anymoose says:
January 27, 2014 at 12:32 pm
These guys lose me in their first sentence: “The warming effect of human-induced greenhouse gases is a given…………” Do they actually think that one molecule of CO2 out of 2,500 molecules of air makes any difference? And man was responsible for 3-4% of that one molecule! They are barking up the wrong tree.
The higher the CO2 is in the atmosphere the colder it is and the less it radiates back. When there is very low level cloud almost 100% of the outgoing heat is radiated back. I think water vapour wins on back radiation. For those not understanding %, you can’t get more than 100%!
”The warming effect of human induced greenhouse gasses is a given”
NO IT IS NOT! It is an unproved theory relying on violations of thermodynamic laws and principles.
Everybody in the climate warming scam is talking about aerosols as the new fashionable reason why the climate is just going right on doing what the climate always has and to hell with the stupidity of the Holy Models of the Climate Catastrophe cult.
So what are aerosols?.
Dust smoke and etc are the usual understandings given by both the lay person and I suspect most climate scientists who will as usual try to hide their ignorance about aerosols and their composition and re-actions and interactions through the usual obfuscation and high [? “fly” ] blown sciency sounding “we know it all” rhetoric,
[ Boy! are the climate scientists getting a rapidly escalating pounding across the skeptic blogs in the last couple of months or even within the last few weeks. Their credibility is absolutely shot to hell in the eyes of the skeptics and increasingly the not so skeptical as well. That type of attitude by the skeptics towards something is usually a forerunner indicating that such a now increasingly cynical attitude towards climate scientists and climate science will expand into the public consciousness in the near future.
And then the pollies will start moving.
Not a good for your future employment as a lavishly funded climate scientist to be tagged as a rabid warmer I would think ]
When it comes to clouds and the factors that create and influence cloud formation of every type Nature as usual is just sitting back and having her usual good belly laugh at the ignorance and stupidity of climate scientists who as usual are running around telling everybody that they will have this cloud thing all taped, understood and under control if we just send more money.
Bacteria and viruses make up a high percentage of the ice crystal and cloud droplet forming factors that create clouds.
Some papers below on the role of ice forming and cloud droplet forming bacteria and fungi and etc.
http://www.insidescience.org/content/ice-ice-bacteria-not-too-cold/1488
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/01/22/1212089110
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-05/nsf-smf051509.php
Those papers are only the tip of the known biological cloud and ice crystal forming bacteria and viral components of cloud formation, a subject the biologists have known about for quite a number of years.
And when you get biological influences of considerable significance into an equation such as global cloud formation then it usually never ever quite gets sorted out as Nature as usual just keeps right on shifting the goal posts.
Why don’t you try adding a similar concentration of arsenic oxide to your tea or coffee?
Or, perhaps, try something a bit safer and more relevant: Add a similar concentration of MILK to your tea or coffee.
Bill Illis says, January 27, 2014 at 4:46 pm:
You’re right, Bill. And still very, very few, even on this blog, seem to question in the least the basic idea that it somehow MUST happen. It just MUST warm the Earth system. But it’s all words. Nothing is ever shown. We’re only helping to perpetuate the myth that it does (the base premise behind the entire (C)AGW hype) by not questioning it.
Like Konrad very succinctly put it on another thread here at WUWT just recently:
“Ultimately there is no way forward that involves claiming ManBearPig is not real while claiming ManBearPigglet is.”
Cloud cover is not ‘forcing’ at all. Water vapour is not a GHG. This can be seen clearly in, say, the Amazon rain forest. The average temperature through the year is 25C, and only varies by 2C. During the day the temperature varies between 2c to 5C.
The water vapour is acting like a Thermos flask to keep the temperatures steady – it keeps the area cooler during the day and warmer through the night. Note that it does not ’cause’ heating or cooling but it PREVENTS heating or cooling. A Thermos flask does not heat a hot liquid or cool a cold one, it prevents or slows the liquids moving to room temperature.
In the case of the rain forest the analogy of the Thermos flask would be to put liquid in at room temperature and put it in, say, the Sahara Desert. The insulation would prevent the liquid reaching the hottest or the coolest of the temperatures outside.
The effect of water on climate is so overwhelming that it obscures any effect of GHGs, whether it is water vapour, ice, oceans, or on land [in soil, rivers or lakes]. The only areas where GHGs can be studied is where water is minimal, for example, the Sahara Desert.
I would argue that GHGs do NOT ’cause’ warming but prevent or slow down cooling. [See below] So how do GHGs fare in the desert. The Sahara can have a daily temperature range of 35C or more! The annual variation of temperatures is large as well. The conclusion would be that GHGs have little or no effect.
It would seem a simple experiment to show the effect of GHGs. It would involve two transparent boxes [using rock crystal?], both with a black metal disc on the base with a thermometer attached. One would be filled with air [no water vapour] and the other with CO2, both at the same pressure. Place the two boxes in a dry desert and measure the temperature of the metal over a 24 hour period.
Does the box with CO2 become hotter than the other, and for how long during the 24 hours.
Also, does the box with CO2 reach temperatures above the maximum temperature possible with just the Sun’s heat. I.E. Does it cause warming rather than prevent cooling?
Anticlimatic
You are totally forgetting or hiding the heat source inside that thermos flask of yours, the very fameous heating element inside such calorimetric experiments for which you are due to make up complete budgets.
You are not mentioning the 150 Ohm resistor under 12 volt lead and aqcid battery voltage for such due practical experiments in the lab, in school.
You are haiding the declain as they say, you are haiding the declain of the sunshine that skines down into that thermos flask of yours every day and to its bottoms.
Why do you do that, still expecting people to take your termos flask budget argunent for serious and valid?
These guys talk of aerosols modifying global warming. That talk is all irrelevant if there is no global warming. And there is none. I attached a comment about that to the Rosenfeld et al paper in Science 343, 379 (2014). While at it I also shot down Hansen 1988. Text of comment aimed at Dr. Rosenfeld that includes my critique of Hansen is below.
‘What is wrong with this opening sentence Dr. Rosenfeld?
“Aerosols counteract part of the warming
effects of greenhouse gases,…”
Answer: you are saying that greenhouse gases have warming effects when nothing is further from the truth. First, there is more carbon dioxide than ever in the air now but there has been no warming whatsoever for the last 16 years. This fact immediately invalidates the claim that addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will cause warming. That claim can be traced back to James Hansen’s presentation to the U. S. Senate in 1988. Problem is that Hansen had no idea of what he was talking about in 1988. He showed a temperature curve that went up and peaked in May 1988. That was the warmest temperature reached in 100 years he told the audience. There was only a one percent chance that this could happen by random chance. “The four warmest years, …. have all been in the eighties. And 1988 so far is so much warmer than 1987, that barring a remarkable and improbable cooling, 1988 will be the warmest year on record.” Hence, that peak is a global warming peak created by greenhouse warming. His problem is that demonstrably that peak is not a global warming peak. It is nothing more exotic than an ordinary El Nino peak, created by the ENSO oscillation of equatorial Pacific. It happens to be one of five El Nino peaks produced by ENSO between the years 1979 and 1997. More specifically, it is the 1987/88 El Nino, the middle one of these five. There were two El Nino peaks before it and these could have supplied the other warm peaks he mentioned. He is also dead wrong about 1988 being warmer than 1987 because they are both of equal height, for the simple reason that they are the two peak years of the 1987/88 El Nino. And as to that “improbable cooling” he expected not to see, it did arrive by year’s end when everybody had left. Not improbably, but as was to be expected. It’s cause was the arrival of a La Nina that always follows an El Nino. His last exhibit was climate models, computed out to the year 2019, that scared the audience. Comparison of his “business as usual” case with what the actual temperature later did shows that he greatly overestimated warming to come. But what can you expect from someone who thinks that finding an El Nino means that global warming is here. His claim that he saw greenhouse warming in 1988 is one of the foundation stones of IPCC that was started that same year. It is complete rubbish.’
To John Finn:
Your snarky suggestion: ‘Why don’t you try adding a similar concentration of arsenic oxide to your tea or coffee? ” is noted. Which oxide, pray tell? Although both arsenic trioxide and
arsenic pentaoxide don’t melt at coffee temperature, I guess you’re talking about the pentaoxide,
which is soluble in water (the trioxide is much less soluble).
Your analogy is strained. Arsenic pentaoxide is notably toxic; carbon dioxide is only
toxic to animals to the extent that no animal can live in too great a concentration of
its own waste.
@ur momisugly Graham W
Thanks! I already didn’t worry much about CO2 anymore, but your conclusion regarding that post is exactly what I thought too. There is no ‘problem’, not even a potential one, with CO2. It never had, has or will ever have any impact. Case closed imho.
@ur momisugly Mike Borgelt
Sorry, I now see you already mentioned it!
For Carbomontanus
Are you talking about a calorimeter?
‘Thermos’ is a brand name and may not be recognised everywhere. I am talking about a vacuum flask or Dewar flask – used to keep, typically, coffee warm while you are travelling.
@anticlimatic
Yes thank you. Thermos may be a brand name. I talk of a Dewar bottle. And of calorimetric budget.
“Cloud cover is a major forcing” my sweet bippy. It is not a forcing at all, it is an inherent, continuous, and inevitable component of all weather. It can’t be resolved as an external agent; it’s a response to n other variables.
Brian H
Cloud cower is defined as a feedback, different from a “forcing”. According to the “mainstream” theory.
And Brian H,
H2O- gas is a GHG indeed.